The Celebrity Archaeology Podcast

PODCAST EPISODE 40 - Margaux Hemingway

Margaux Louise Hemingway (February
16, 1954 was an American fashion model and actress. The statuesque
Hemingway earned success as a supermodel in the mid-1970s appearing
on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and
TIME. She signed a million-dollar contract for Fabergé as the
spokesmodel for Babe perfume. She was the granddaughter of writer
Ernest Hemingway. Her later years were marred by highly publicized
episodes of addiction and depression. She committed suicide by drug
overdose in 1996 at the age of 42.
Early life Born Margot Louise Hemingway in
Portland, Oregon, she was the daughter of Byra Louise (née
Whittlesey) and Jack Hemingway (eldest son of writer Ernest
Hemingway). When she learned that she was named after the wine,
Château Margaux, which her parents drank on the night she was
conceived, she changed the spelling from "Margot" to "Margaux" to
match. She had two sisters, actress Mariel Hemingway, and Joan
(nicknamed Muffet). During her childhood, the family relocated from
Oregon to Cuba, where her famous grandfather had lived, then to San
Francisco, and later to Idaho, where they lived on her
grandfather's farm in Ketchum. The family took trips each summer
back to Oregon with the daughters' godmother, who had a farm in
Salem. She graduated from the Catlin Gabel School in Portland.
Margaux struggled with a variety of disorders beginning in her
teenage years, including alcoholism, depression, bulimia, and
epilepsy. With her permission, a video recording was made of her
therapy session related to her bulimia, and it was broadcast on
television. She also suffered from dyslexia. In 2013, her younger
sister Mariel revealed in the documentary Running from Crazy that
both Margaux and their older sister Muffet had been sexually abused
by their father. Career 1972–1975: Modeling At six feet tall,
Hemingway experienced success as a model, including a
million-dollar contract for Fabergé as the spokesmodel for Babe
perfume in the 1970s. This was the first million-dollar contract
ever awarded to a fashion model. She also appeared on the covers of
Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue, as well as on the
June 16, 1975, cover of TIME, which dubbed her one of the "new
beauties". The September 1, 1975, cover issue of American Vogue
called Hemingway "New York's New Supermodel”. In a 1997 E! True
Hollywood Story that profiled Hemingway's life, her mentor and
close friend Zachary Selig discussed how he helped launch her early
career with his initial marketing and public relations work as she
became a global celebrity, and he introduced her to yoga and the
Solar Kundalini "Codex Relaxatia" paradigm as tools for success and
to overcome some of her debilitating mental disorders. Selig and Hemingway spent
time with the Hemingway family at their property in Ketchum
adjacent to Sun Valley, where they studied Solar Kundalini, yoga,
and meditation together. Hemingway continued using these relaxation
skills for the rest of her life. During the height of her modeling
career in the mid- to late 1970s, Hemingway was a regular attendee
of New York City's exclusive discothèque Studio 54, often in the
company of such celebrities as Halston, Bianca Jagger, Liza
Minnelli, Grace Jones, and Andy Warhol. At such social mixers, she
began to experiment with alcohol and drugs. 1976–1996: Film career
Hemingway made her film debut in the Lamont Johnson-directed rape
and revenge film Lipstick (1976), alongside her 14-year-old sister
Mariel, and Anne Bancroft. In it, she plays a fashion model who is
terrorized by a rapist. The film's violent depiction of rape led it
to be labeled an exploitation film, though in later years it had
success as a cult film. She followed this with a supporting role in
the Italian horror film Killer Fish (1979), opposite Lee Majors and
Karen Black. Her following project was the comedy They Call Me
Bruce? in 1982. In 1984, Hemingway had a supporting part in Over
the Brooklyn Bridge, opposite Elliott Gould and Shelley Winters.
After a skiing accident in 1984, Hemingway gained 75 pounds and
became increasingly depressed. In 1987, she checked into the Betty
Ford Center. Attempting to make a comeback, she appeared on the
cover of Playboy magazine in May 1990, and she asked Playboy to
hire Selig as the creative director for her cover story. It was
shot in Belize.[17] Despite her attempts, Hemingway's
budding film career began to falter, and she took roles in several
B-movies, including Killing Machine (1984) and Inner Sanctum
(1991). Hemingway continued to support herself by appearing in a
small number of direct-to-video films into the 1990s, autographing
her nude photos from Playboy magazine, and endorsing a psychic
telephone hotline owned by her cousin Adiel Hemingway. Shortly
before her death, she was set to host the outdoor adventure series
Wild Guide on the Discovery Channel. Personal life Hemingway's
first marriage, to Errol Wetanson, ended in divorce. They met when,
at age 19, she accompanied her father to the Plaza Hotel in New
York City on a business trip. Four months later she moved from
Idaho to New York City to live with Wetanson as a guest at Selig's
apartment at 12 East 72nd Street, which was owned by heiress Gloria
Vanderbilt. It was there that Selig made Hemingway's business and
social introductions to his friends, such as Marian McEvoy, fashion
editor at Women's Wear Daily; photographer Francesco Scavullo;
fashion designer Halston; Vogue magazine fashion editor Francis
Stein; and Jon Revson, Selig's cousin. Revson, a scion of the
Revson family that created Revlon cosmetics, declined Selig's offer
for Hemingway to endorse Revlon, whereas later Fabergé signed her
on with the largest salary of its day. Revson did come to visit
both Selig and Hemingway (with the Hemingway family) in Ketchum,
Idaho, to congratulate her after Hemingway's TIME magazine cover
appeared in June 1975. Marian McEvoy quickly interviewed Margaux at
a party given by Selig, which resulted in Hemingway's Women's Wear
Daily front- and back-page story that launched Hemingway into the
fashion limelight. Hemingway then married Frenchman Bernard
Faucher. They lived in Paris for a year. She divorced him in 1985,
after six years.’ Hemingway experienced familial dramas
throughout her life. Her relationship with her mother, Puck, was
fraught with tension, but they did reconcile prior to Puck's death
from cancer in 1988. She also experienced intense competition with
her younger sister Mariel, who received greater accolades for her
acting. In the 1990s, Hemingway went forward with allegations that
her godfather had molested her as a child; her father, Jack, and
stepmother, Angela, resented the allegations and stopped speaking
to her. Angela told People magazine, "Jack and I did not talk to
her for two years. She constantly lies. The whole family won't have
anything to do with her. She's nothing but an angry woman.” A 2013
television documentary film Running from Crazy, in which Margaux's
sister Mariel speaks of the Hemingway family history of alcoholism,
drug addiction, and suicide, contains documentary film excerpts
that had been filmed by Margaux prior to her death. Death On July
1, 1996, Hemingway was found dead in her studio apartment in Santa
Monica. Though her body was found reportedly badly decomposed on
July 1, the official autopsy and California death records list it
as her date of death. She had taken an overdose of phenobarbital,
according to the Los Angeles County coroner's toxicology report one
month later, though her family had difficulty accepting the fact of
her suicide. Mariel Hemingway's husband told People Magazine in
1996 that, "This year was the best I'd seen Margaux in years. She
had gotten herself back together," but in a December 2005 episode
of Larry King Live, Mariel said she now accepted Margaux's death as
a suicide. Links: The Book: https://amzn.to/2HrXUUS The Podcast:
https://apple.co/2HGtPQZ
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